1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for discovering peripheral communication devices that are wirelessly connectable to a portable terminal. More particularly, the present invention relates to a portable terminal for discovering wirelessly connectable devices in at least one of various wireless communication schemes supported by the portable terminal, and for displaying the discovered devices in the form of a list, and a method for discovering devices thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with the significant development of information and communication technology as well as semiconductor technology, the supply and use of all types of portable terminals have rapidly increased. More particularly, portable terminals have recently been developed in consideration of a mobile convergence stage to include traditional communication fields and other terminal fields. As a representative example of such a portable terminal, a mobile communication terminal provides various functions such as a TV watching function (e.g., mobile broadcasting such as Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) or Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB)), a music playing function (e.g., MPEG Audio Layer-3 (MP3)), a photographing function, a data communication function, an Internet access function, and a near distance wireless communication function as well as a general communication function such as a voice call or message transmission/reception.
There are Bluetooth, infrared communication, Zigbee, and wireless Local Area Network (LAN) schemes as representative examples of a wireless communication scheme for providing the near distance wireless communication function. Recent portable terminals generally use the Bluetooth and wireless LAN schemes. Additionally, in order to address the restriction of the wireless LAN scheme that provides a wireless communication connection with another terminal through an Access Point (AP), the Wi-Fi alliance has developed Wi-Fi Direct technology.
The Wi-Fi Direct technology was developed based on Wi-Fi technology, which enables terminals to establish a wireless communication connection without using the wireless LAN AP. As illustrated previously, recent portable terminals provide near distance wireless communication schemes such as Bluetooth, wireless LAN, and Wi-Fi Direct schemes.
However, a conventional portable terminal selects one of the various communication schemes and discovers peripheral terminals that are connectable considering only the selected scheme. This may cause a user to be unaware of the merits and demerits of respective wireless communication schemes, which results in an inconvenience for the user. For example, to transmit files stored in the user's portable terminal to another terminal, when the user does not know which wireless communication schemes the other terminal supports, the user must discover terminals in consideration of each wireless communication scheme until another terminal for connection is discovered. However, the user, who simply desires to transmit selected files to another terminal and may be inept at using electronic devices, is now required to understand a communication scheme for transmitting the files, which also results in an inconvenience.